Oh, if only I could avoid the news. Red state blue state my state you state – sometimes I shut it off for a couple of days, but I think I need to stay plugged in to know what I’m fighting against – and to be reminded about what happens when people don’t get along with people. An author I really admire is slowly wasting away under the effects of Alzheimer’s but still spouts more wisdom than any number of think tanks trying to solve the world’s problems – and he argues that all crimes spring from people not recognizing other people as people… i.e. not having the empathy to recognize the basis under which “do unto others” operates – that you do unto others as you’d want them to do unto you because when you wrong someone else, they feel the same way, and just as passionately, as YOU feel when YOU are wronged.
Watching the news reminds me that I’ve GOT to be talking to people around me, making friends, creating networks and communities out of chaos because maybe, just maybe, the next time one of those people comes into conflict they’ll see it as a conflict with someONE rather than someTHING and treat the situation accordingly.
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One of the best parts of being home with my open mics – traveling across the country reminds you that vast swaths of the Midwest and West are spectacularly monochromatic. -
Here on the East Coast, we’re deliciously rich in culture and I’m grateful for it. -
Amadou Kouyate playing kora for us at Teavolve in Baltimore, MD. -
November 3rd at Teavolve – I don’t like kids. But Amadou’s son falling asleep in his djembe case was about the cutes thing ever.
Last night I had a cantankerous man, probably in his mid to late 60s, trying to drum along with a hip hop artist on stage at my open mic, hands smackin’ his djembe pretty gently. It wasn’t invited but it wasn’t bad, I watched to see how everyone interacted and the artist on stage very discreetly shook his head and waved the drummer off. I thought it was handled pretty well – and the drummer stopped instantly – and no-one in the room would’ve notice…except the older guy muttered loudly “Not like I haven’t been playing drums for FIFTY YEARS BOY!” and so I had to take this ass aside and explain that it doesn’t matter how long he’d been playing drums, my open mic is all about giving someone a comfortable place on stage and that sometimes performers AREN’T comfortable with collaboration on the fly yadda yadda – and the guy wouldn’t let it go, arguing that people under thirty just see him as an old man with nothing to offer but damn it WE MARCHED ABOUT VIETNAM AND WHAT DIFFERENCE DID THAT KID EVER MAKE?!?
There was much calming and eventually a departure (“eh, I can’t stick around anyway… I’ll see you next week”) – but even on the way out the door this guy just wouldn’t let go of HIS idea that there was an insurmountable wall betwixt him and the hip hop artist’s generation.
And I’m trying to build bridges – but damn people make it hard. I’m dreading next week. But I also know that the venue and my *community* has my back. So I watch the news and I DO get to wondering how previous generations in the midst of all their marches and anger view THIS generation’s click-by-click armchair activism, and it’s GOT to make them angry. It made ME angry in college, makes me angry still, but all the more reason to stay educated and keep the lines of communication open I guess. And lines of communication don’t equal sotto voce imprecations.
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